[409] For examples and evidences of these practices, see Herodot.
ii. 162; the amputation of the nose and cars of Patarbêmis, by
Apries, king of Egypt (Xenophon, Anab. i. 9-13). There were a
large number of men deprived of hands, feet, or eyesight, in
the satrapy of Cyrus the younger, who had inflicted all these
severe punishments for the prevention of crime,—he did not (says
Xenophon) suffer criminals to scoff at him (εἴα καταγελᾷν).
The ἐκτομὴ was carried on at Sardis (Herodot. iii. 49),—500
παῖδες ἐκτόμιαι formed a portion of the yearly tribute paid by
the Babylonians to the court of Susa (Herod. iii. 92). Selling
of children for exportation by the Thracians (Herod. v. 6);
there is some trace of this at Athens, prior to the Solonian
legislation (Plutarch, Solôn, 23), arising probably out of the
cruel state of the law between debtor and creditor. For the
sacrifice of children to Kronus by the Carthaginians, in troubled
times, (according to the language of Ennius, “Pœni soliti suos
sacrificare puellos,”) Diodor. xx. 14; xiii. 86. Porphyr. de
Abstinent. ii. 56: the practice is abundantly illustrated in
Möver’s Die Religion der Phönizier, pp. 298-304.
Arrian blames Alexander for cutting off the nose and ears of the
Satrap Bêssus, saying that it was an act altogether barbaric,
(_i. e._ non-Hellenic,) (Exp. Al. iv. 7, 6.) About the σεβασμὸς
θεοπρεπὴς περὶ τὸν βασιλέα in Asia, see Strabo, xi. p. 526.
[410] Thucyd. i. 6: Herodot. i. 10.
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